Rockford, Illinois

Rockford is a city in and the county seat of Winnebago County, Illinois, located 107.7 miles west of Chicago. The first white settlers arrived in 1834, and Rockford became a town in 1839 and a city in 1852. Most of its founders were transplants from New England and New York, and, following the Black Hawk War, additional immigrants moved to Illinois. Before the American Civil War, Rockford was a staunchly abolitionist town, with most of its residents being Free Soilers or Republicans; in 1860, Abraham Lincoln won 3,985 votes in Winnebago County to Democratic candidate Stephen A. Douglas' 817. During the twentieth century, an influx of Italians, Poles, Lithuanians, and African-Americans replaced the once-dominant Irish and Swedish communities of Rockford, and it was once a stronghold of the labor and socialist movements, electing socialists as mayor without interruption from 1921 to 1955. Rockford grew in size after the 1950s, but it was hit hard by the recession of the early 1980s, making it one of the highest-unemployed cities in America. The 21st century saw continued troubles due to the decline of the Rust Belt. In 2018, Rockford had a population of 146,526 people.